


what it's like to be alone

by truejaku (hereonourstreet)



Category: DRAMAtical Murder, DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 09:39:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6189511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereonourstreet/pseuds/truejaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1707251">ATYBMH</a>.</p><p>Mizuki and Noiz have been together for several months now and are still working through themselves to find a gentle rhythm with each other. Noiz is not entirely convinced he's in the "normal" relationship he's always wanted yet, because he still only sees himself as anything but. When Mink and Aoba announce that they'll be home for an extended visit, Noiz realizes he's the odd one out: the only one who hasn't been Scrapped by Aoba. That's when the idea comes to him...</p><p>15 chapters planned, updating tags as I go. Hoping to update every Monday but things have gotten considerably more hectic than when I was writing ATYBMH so I might miss a couple weeks. Minao will be technically a sideship but also featured quite prominently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

            “How big do you think Mink’s dick is?”

            Mizuki swallows loudly and then sets his glass down on the bedside table. He rolls onto his back and sighs.

            “I don’t know,” he says, quirking an eyebrow up. He stares at the ceiling as he deliberates. “What if he’s one of those huge guys with lots of muscles and stuff but actually has a tiny, little dick?”

            You roll onto your side and prop your head up in your hand and look down at him.

            “You think so?”

            He takes a deep breath.

            “Nah… It’s probably huge.”

            You grin at your boyfriend and let your eyes trail down his chest. He’s panting, trying to catch his breath. His skin is gleaming in light coat of sweat and he rubs at his bangs with the back of his hand. He turns his head to you so quickly that you’re surprised he doesn’t break his neck. His eyes rake down your body and he frowns.

            “How come you’re never as worn out as I am after sex?” he asks. You grin wider.

            “Because you do all the work.”

            “Right.”

            “Hey, I try to,” you shrug. “You just want me too bad. You’re always overcome with the need to put your dick in my ass.”

            “That’s true,” Mizuki nods. “That’s exactly what it is.”

            He hops out of bed, still naked, and heads to the shower. He urges you to go too, but you decide to read over Aoba’s e-mail in bed one more time. It’s pretty long and you keep expecting it to say something more important than it does, though you’re not sure why. He’ll be home to visit in a couple weeks and wants to have a party at Black Needle. Three more paragraphs of what this party should entail, a couple paragraphs about what he wants to do with you guys while he’s home and one last one about not being a weirdo to Mink and then he signs off.

            Every time you read it, you expect something more. But that’s silly.

            _He_ doesn’t know that you’ve been thinking about him lately.

            It’s not incriminatingly so, of course. You’ve been thinking about Aoba a lot, but you’re certainly not interested in taking Mink’s place. You’ve been dating Mizuki “officially” for nine months, now. You’re finally getting into a groove where you aren’t worried about your future together. At the beginning, you were terrified every day that he was going to change his mind and dump you, but you scraped your way through that and now it doesn’t occur to you at all. Everyone knows that he’s your boyfriend – that word has been haunting you for years now, but you’ve finally come to terms with it.

            The first month or so, telling people that you had a boyfriend felt bizarre. It felt like you were lying – you were positive they’d think you were, at least – even though you knew it was the truth. Someone liked you enough to be your boyfriend, and to tell everyone else that he _was_ your boyfriend. It felt like a sick joke, but it wasn’t. It was real, and after a couple months, you were at peace with it.

            Mizuki has been your boyfriend for almost a year now, and you never knew it was possible for a person to be this happy.

            You moved in with him and his cats at first, but it didn’t work. There wasn’t enough space for two, much less three when Emmerich came to visit, and definitely not for twenty cats to roam around comfortably. You both got a new place together – a house near Aoba’s place, and sometimes you score some free food from his grandmother just for going over to visit her now and then. She’s a good woman – she lets you pretend that you go over to visit her for her own sake, because she’s lonely and misses Aoba. She does, but she still never calls you out for actually going over because you find comfort in having some sort of maternal figure in your life for once. She’s like the mother you never had, _plus_ she can cook and smacks Koujaku on the back of the head with a ladle all the time. Win-win.

            Yeah, Koujaku’s still around. The less said about him the better.

            It’s Koujaku who doesn’t entirely understand your setup with Mizuki, but it’s not that difficult to grasp: you don’t have sex with other people without informing each other first. That’s the rule.

            Of course, it’s sort of a stupid rule, because you’ve never really needed it. Neither of you have felt like having sex with anyone else other than each other – unless it’s with someone else _with_ each other. That is, you have threesomes quite frequently, but you’ve never slept with someone else without Mizuki there. He’s actually really into seeing you get fucked by someone else, but you’re far too jealous to do the same. The only dick you want to see in Mizuki is your own, though if he had another dick inside him when you weren’t there, you don’t think you’d really mind. Sometimes you leave on business trips, and tell him to find some hot piece of ass to fuck while you’re gone, but he never does. He calls you up on the Coil and you both jack off to each other before bed.

            You think he conflates sex with love more than he’d like to admit he does.

            You definitely conflate with love, just not in the way most people do. Then again, you never tried to hide that. You never really knew you _did_ it, so you never knew there was anything to hide. Mizuki prefers to act like he’s a playboy but he’s not. He likes being in a relationship. He likes being committed.

            Koujaku says it’s a recipe for disaster, but it’s working for you quite well. Mizuki is adamant that you both stay open and honest with each other – the second you feel uncomfortable about something, you tell him and vice versa. You agreed and so far you’ve been faithful to that. You’ve never felt threatened by anyone else. And that’s sort of an accomplishment. Mizuki has actually made you feel loved, even with the condition that he could fuck someone else at any given time.

            Then again, Mizuki was the first to _ever_ make you feel loved, so maybe he gets special consideration for that. No one will ever make you feel the way your first love did, and you hope you never have to worry about that. You hope you stay with Mizuki forever.

            Mizuki hopes that too. He’s said so. That’s why having a revolving door policy about sex takes the pressure off you both: you haven’t talked about marriage or anything like that, but it’s easier to want to spend every moment with each other when you know you aren’t beholden to it.

            A year ago, you wouldn’t have thought you’d go for something like that with Mizuki. Then again, a year ago, you weren’t exactly healthy.

            You got a good job – a real job, a nine to five job at an office – based solely on your merits as a programmer. Mizuki was a little shocked and then he felt bad for being shocked. He had no idea you were so interested and so talented at programming. He never really caught on that you were anything more than just a “computer guy” so you taught him how to code a few easy things and he was blown away.

            He was even more blown away by the new laptop you bought him the next day. And then the dinner you took him to the day after that, and the hotel after the dinner, and – the point is, you love spending money on Mizuki. It might be half the reason you took the job at all. You wanted disposable income, and you wanted to spend it all on him.

            Mizuki was an orphan and you grew up rich. You grew up alone, but you grew up rich. Financial stability was attractive to Mizuki – practically, romantically… and sexually. You certainly never complained about that. You liked to buy him stuff – and he liked to fuck you afterwards. It was an excellent setup and Koujaku despised hearing the torrid details following the events.

            Of course, simply buying Mizuki things wasn’t your only method of seduction. You’re sort of embarrassed how aroused you get when Mizuki suggests you’re sort of like his sugar daddy; when he starts to roleplay like he’s your boytoy and he’ll do anything you want after you buy him a nice dinner. He knows that’s not true – that you buy him things because you like to do it, and that you’ll never, _ever_ expect anything from him – but you’re both enticed by the idea, even if it’s somewhat put on. You like to treat him like a princess and he likes to let you. You have a shocking, burning need to take care of someone… and Mizuki has an even bigger desire to be taken care of. If you sat down and really thought about the Freudian qualities of all of it, you might find that all of that makes perfect sense, but you really don’t want to do that. You’d rather just put your dick in Mizuki’s ass and be done with it.

            You mesh with him romantically, too. You find out quite quickly that you’re the “whisper sweet nothings into his ear” type of person, and Mizuki is the “shivers when you tell him you’ll take care of him until your dying day” type. You like to spoil him and he likes to be spoiled. He is, of course, very good about voicing his gratitude in more ways than just sex. He likes to whisper against your ear sometimes that you’re really good to him and it means a lot and you always blush because you always thought of it the other way around: Mizuki was the first person who was ever good to you, even when you felt you didn’t deserve it. You know what it’s like to have someone be good to you, so to know that someone thinks _you’re_ good to _them_ is bewildering. It isn’t hard, you suppose, when that person is Mizuki. Mizuki is easy to be good to.

            Mizuki does this thing where he takes a quick, deep breath and clasps his hands together in front of him. His eyes dart up to the ceiling and his lips curl into the tiniest smile. It means he’s about to say something pretty important. Something that matters a lot to him and he really needs you not to make a joke of it. You figured that out after a while. This is Serious Mizuki and you can’t laugh at him.

            It’s almost always to tell you that he’s in a bad place. And for Mizuki, that means he’s scared and insecure and you’ve found that it’s incredibly easy to reassure Mizuki. That’s because you fit together. You’re not entirely sure how, but you know you do, because Mizuki can’t stay upset for more than a day. You always end up in bed together, not necessarily having sex, but touching each other. Letting each other know you’re there.

            Of course, you can’t actually feel that he’s there.

            You’ve been thinking about Aoba a lot lately.

            You’ve been imagining what Aoba and Mink are like as a couple. They’re probably more like a normal couple. The kind that stay monogamous and eat dinner together every night and sleep in the same bed. When they have sex, they run their hands down each other’s skin and muscles and curves and they squeeze and poke and grab. They can have soft, gentle sex whenever they want. They don’t have to bite hard enough to leave a mark or scratch too deep to make the other person feel it. They _can_ if they want to, but it’s not necessary. Ever.

            They’re not abnormal. They don’t have to worry about hurting each other every time they fuck.

            You sometimes think about how Mizuki and Aoba were best friends before either of them met you. You wonder if they could have ended up together in another universe. You wonder if Mizuki could have ended up with Mink. Maybe even Koujaku.

            You wonder if he would have been happier with them. He wouldn’t even realize there was a reality where he would end up with someone who couldn’t feel him kiss his temple or touch his hips or rub his shoulders. He wouldn’t even know. If Mizuki had ended up with Aoba, checking his boyfriend over for marks and injuries every night wouldn’t cross his mind. It would seem silly and ridiculous and make no sense to him.

            You wonder if Mizuki would prefer that, and that puts you in a bad place.

            He says he wouldn’t, but you don’t know if you can believe that.

            He says nothing scares him more than the thought of you leaving him, and you can’t believe the thought ever even crosses his mind. You always say something like, _“I know you think I’m stupid, but do you really think I’m_ that _dumb? I’m dating a guy who looks like you and you think I’d want to give that up?”_ He laughs dryly but you both know it’s a temporary fix: Mizuki isn’t exactly low on self-esteem. He knows that if you left him, it wouldn’t be because of his looks. He knows it wouldn’t even be because of the sex. He’s incredible at sex and he knows that. You know it, too. You just never know how to react to someone who’s scared you’re going to leave them. You don’t understand how you’re in a position _to_ leave someone. You’ve never had that kind of power before. You never had anyone else before. Now you do, and you keep forgetting that you could leave him at any point.

            You don’t want to. You’ve never wanted to. The idea that you could is exhilarating. The idea that you _might_ is laughable.

            Mizuki peeks at your Coil screen as he crosses from the bathroom back to the bed. His hair is wet and so is the back of his shoulders. He missed a spot. He’s wearing unforgivably tight briefs and you roll your eyes at him. You don’t understand how he can sleep so nakedly. You have to wear long sleeves and pants to bed. Even socks. Mizuki makes sure the fan at the foot of the bed is always on the correct setting: enough to keep you from overheating but not so much that you get cold. You wouldn’t know either way, but he likes to be careful.

            “I still can’t believe he sent that email,” he says as he crawls back under the huge, green comforter. You glance at him, reaching over to flick the water droplets away. “So detailed before he even asked if it was okay to _have_ the party at Black Needle. _I want everyone to be there but limit the alcohol supply so no one gets too crazy.”_

“That’s a good impression.”

            “He wants to put me out by having a party at my tattoo parlor, plus he thinks he can ask me how to stock my alcohol supply? When will people stop thinking of Black Needle as a bar. It’s where I work.”

            You’ve heard this before. You’re on Mizuki’s side, of course, but you do find it a little understandable that people think of Black Needle as a bar when it is a bar.

            “You like to complain,” you tell him with a small smirk. He shakes his head.

            “You like to listen.”

            “You’re only complaining because you’re excited,” you say, flipping the screen away and taking your Coil off. “You can’t wait for him to get home.”

            He presses his lips together to suppress a smile and narrows his eyes to stare grumpily at you. It’s so fucking cute you can hardly stand it. You lean over to kiss him and start to run one hand down his side, hoping that by the time you get to his waist, he’ll be open to the idea of fucking you again. You’re still open enough, it would be easy…

            He grabs your hand in his and pins it back, pulling away from the kiss and shaking his head at you.

            “Hey… I know what you’re doing. But you said you’d let me look at you with no complaints after sex. You have to hold up your end of the deal.”

            You lick your lips and stare at his. You smile slightly at his frown because you can tell he’s somewhat aroused, but he’s also very serious. You’re stuck at a crossroads: this is both your least and most favorite part of the day.

            You sigh and lay on your back, grabbing the comforter and whipping it off of you frenziedly. It swishes through the air and lands near the foot of the bed as Mizuki sits up on his knees and moves to straddle you. He’s about to inspect your entire body for disconcerting marks. You like it because it makes you feel cared for; no one ever gave a shit that you had this condition before, and now you’re dating someone who wants to do this for you _every day_. But you also feel scrutinized and _looked at,_ which is sometimes arousing… and sometimes infuriating. You sometimes feel objectified, even though you know it’s not Mizuki’s intention. In fact, when he first suggested it, he told you to take your time thinking about it, and you’re always free to tell him no whenever you want. He insists that you not have sex afterwards, because he doesn’t want it to become an erotic event. It didn’t make sense to you at first, but you replay the conversation in your mind a lot. Sometimes you even insist on having it again and –

            “Stop that,” he says. You almost jump because his voice startles you so much.

            “Stop what?”

            “Staring at me like that,” he tells you, his eyes heavy lidded as he’s scanning across your stomach. His lips are trying not to smile. “You know I hate it when you look at me like that while I do this.”

            Ah. You were doing it again.

            “Sorry,” you say, a smirk curling onto your lips. “I can’t help it. You look so good in those panties.”

            “They’re briefs,” he corrects, and then he goes back to observing your skin. “The panties are in the dresser,” he mumbles.

            He says that you stare at him with sex in your eyes sometimes when he does this. And that’s true, sometimes you do. But sometimes you do it without meaning to, and you have no earthly idea what that must mean subconsciously.

            “Tell me again what’s so bad about thinking my boyfriend is so sexy?” you ask. But that’s not what you really want to know. You want to hear him say it again. The thing he said the first night he ever did this.

            He blinks up at you with a knowing smirk.

            “Nothing’s wrong with thinking I’m sexy,” he says, shifting down more to look at your pelvis. “But you know this isn’t a sexy thing. I don’t want to have sex after this.”

            “Why not?”

            Maybe it’s the urgency in your reply or maybe it’s the tone of your voice, but Mizuki’s head shoots up at you in a sort of worry that you don’t see that often. His eyebrows are slanted and his lips are slightly parted, and he shakes his head slightly at you.

            “What do you mean? You know why not.”

            You look away because you can’t stand to look at his face right now. You don’t want to tell him that you just want to hear it again, but you do. You frown at the wall across from you and refuse to answer.

            “Hm,” he hums, his fingers playing at the hem of your boxers. He already knows and you thank God for that. “Is it okay if I take these down now?”

            You nod curtly and he slowly rolls your boxers down. You wiped yourself off with a tissue after you came so you shouldn’t be sticky, but you never know for sure. He makes quick work of looking at your dick and then he pulls your boxers back up and rolls the legs up to check your thighs. You huff, impatient for his reply.

            “I don’t like having sex after this because it doesn’t turn me on,” he says idly, almost as if he’s on autopilot. He continues down your legs for his inspection. “Your body turns me on when you’re willing to sexualize it, but when I’m checking you for injuries, it’s not sexual for me. It’s intimate, because I’m touching you in a way I don’t touch just anybody. But you can touch people for reasons other than sex. That’s what this is. Okay. Turn over when you’re ready.”

            You turn your head back to him and then flip onto your stomach. You always start with your front because it’s more embarrassing. Your back is easier to swallow, so he does it second, to get the hard part over with quickly.

            “I like touching you without the eventuality of sex,” he tells you. “It’s okay to want to touch people. And it’s okay to want people to touch you without wanting to have sex. It’s not leading them on. I just want to make sure you’re healthy.”

            It makes you think of Emmerich. Your little brother back in Germany, learning how to cook and working at a dive bar in five-thousand dollar button up shirts. He’s gotten a little wilder since he left your dad’s company and sometimes you worry about him. Mizuki reminds you that he’s young and he’s experimenting with being on his own, away from the oppressive thumb of your parents, and he’ll be fine if he’s with people who take care of him – the way _you’re_ with people who take care of you. You wish _you_ were the one there to take care of him, but you have to trust him. He spent most of his life without you and turned into a good person, so you have to believe that he can continue the pattern.

            When you first got to see him again, you both spent so much time _touching_ each other. It was the first nonsexual touch you think you ever had, and it was confusing to you. Maybe not at the time, but you brought it up to Mizuki later. _“We would fall asleep holding onto each other, our hugs lingered longer than most, is that normal? Is that okay?”_ He never laughed at you. He smiled, but it was comforting, not bemused. He’d hold your hand and you never realized before he told you that you could touch people you love without a sexual connotation necessary. _“You can love people non-sexually, can’t you?” “I guess.” “So you can touch those people non-sexually, too.”_

It makes sense now, but you were at a complete loss at the time. Mizuki was so miserable when he said that it’s probably confusing when no one wants to touch you because they want to be with you and that was when it clicked with you. No one before Mizuki treated you well. And no one before Emmerich touched you without wanting to have sex with you.

            Sometimes Mizuki will touch you and the sexual energy is impossible to miss – other times he’ll touch you so innocently that you think for a split second that Emmerich is there. You like that. That’s a new concept to you. And you like it.

            “All done,” Mizuki says with a grin in his voice. You peek over your shoulder at him as he flops back onto the bed. You raise an eyebrow.

            “You didn’t check my ass.”

            “I checked your ass when I was fucking you twenty minutes ago.”

            “But you should check it again.”

            “Do you just want me to touch your butt?”

            “Maybe.”

            “Why don’t you just ask me to touch your butt, then?”

            _Because it’s not really a touch if I can’t feel it._

You hope the smile that you give him is convincing enough. You suppose it is, because he returns it and then rolls over to grab his Coil.

            “Now _I_ have to reread that email,” he says, pulling up Aoba’s correspondence. “It’s just – I still can’t believe it.”

            “It sounds like they’re doing well in America,” you say. Mizuki nods his head from shoulder to shoulder and shrugs.

            “Yeah, they do. I’m sure Aoba misses home like crazy, though.”

            “Maybe,” you say. You sit up finally to reach under your pillow for your pajamas. “He might like it in America better.”

            “I guess,” Mizuki remarks. He seems to hardly hear what you said.

            “They seem like a good couple.”

            He furrows his brows.

            “What?”

            “I said they seem like a good couple.”

            “I heard you,” Mizuki says, finally turning to you. “I just don’t understand what you mean.”

            “Aoba and Mink,” you clarify. “They seem like a happy, normal couple.”

            Mizuki seems confused.

            “What does that mean?”

            “After what they went through,” you say. That seems to click with him. “They seem well adjusted for all that. I think it was probably more intense than what we went through, even.”

            Mizuki nods silently. His eyes start to move away from yours slowly, as if he’s thinking hard about something else. You watch him as he slowly shifts his attention back to the email and starts reading again. You blink slowly at him in irritation but he doesn’t notice.

            “You know,” you continue. “Scrap and all.”

            He turns to you sharply again.

            “Yeah,” he says. “I know. I knew what you meant.”

            “I’m just saying. It put a strain on you. But with Mink I guess it went differently.”

            “It did,” he nods. “He _failed_ my Scrap. He was successful with Mink. He didn’t even know what was happening with mine. Mink’s he did on purpose.”

            “Yeah,” you say, aware that you have to tread carefully to keep the subject open. “I guess if he does it willingly, there’s a better chance of success. Much better.”

            “I guess,” Mizuki shrugs.

            “I wasn’t there for yours, so…”

            “Yeah. I know.”

            “I just wonder if he’s got a better hold on Scrap now,” you say. “I wonder if he’s done it since Mink.”

            “I hope not,” Mizuki says, but he’s not grave or serious. He raises his eyebrows and looks away. “They said I was lucky.”

            “Because you were so strong,” you finish. Mizuki nods and you roll your lips inwards as you stare at him. Mizuki was mentally much stronger than most people. It took other Dry Juice members _months_ to come out of Morphine’s brainwashing. It was only hanging onto Mizuki by a thread.

            “I guess,” Mizuki says, taking a deep breath and turning his Coil off. He throws it on the bedside table and folds his hands in front of him. “I don’t know why Aoba would have needed to use it since Mink. It’s a pretty serious power. I think if anything really severe happened there, something that would need the use of Scrap, he’d have told us about it. Tae-san, at least.”

            You nod. You don’t really care if he has used it since then. You just want to know if Aoba would be willing to use it again. Mizuki wouldn’t know the answer to that, of course. And you don’t want him to know that you’re thinking about it.

            He doesn’t need to know that you’re considering being Scrapped.

            “It just seems like Aoba Scrapped Mink and now they’re a normal couple. That must be nice.”

            Mizuki turns to you with a small, confused smile.

            “I don’t think that was it.”

            “Well, Mink is better for it. Aoba Scrapped him and now he’s better off.”

            Mizuki holds your gaze and licks his lips. The look on his face warns you to pull back in your questioning because he seems suspicious.

            “Maybe,” he says finally, his smile widening. “But you’d have to be pretty weird to want to date Aoba in the first place.” You know you’re supposed to smile at Mizuki’s joke, but you don’t. “So I’d say we were better off to begin with than both of them, anyway.”

            “Yeah,” you say half-heartedly just before he picks up the clicker and turns the television on.

            “What do you wanna watch before bed?”

            He puts on some game show that you can’t follow because you’re too distracted. Every now and then he laughs and you have to pretend that you were paying attention and force a chuckle. But you’re not paying attention. You’re thinking about Aoba, just like you have been for quite some time now. You’re wondering how Aoba and Mink are doing. You’re wondering how they work. You wonder if they fit the way you and Mizuki fit. You wonder if they fit in ways you and Mizuki don’t and you wonder if Aoba can help you with that. You wonder if Aoba can help you fit with Mizuki.

            You want to be normal. You’ve told Mizuki that before. You want to have sweet, tender sex like Mizuki wants sometimes and you want to go to bed without having your naked body checked over by your boyfriend. You want to feel the hugs and kisses and feather-light tickles of his hair and stubble and fingertips against you. You want to be a normal couple and any time you tell Mizuki that, he gets upset.

            _“How are we not normal?”_ he asks. _“How are we any different than anyone else? Stop saying that. We are normal. You are normal. I will tell you that until the day you die, because your parents obviously couldn’t. You. Are. Normal.”_

But you’re not normal, and no amount of Mizuki’s love can change that. Nothing that Mizuki does or says can reverse the fact that _you can’t feel him touch you_ and you never will.

            Right?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noiz will come to remember this party as the first one that actually fucking mattered

            The ferry to the mainland is too rocky for Koujaku. He gets motion sickness easily, and that’s why you don’t bring anything to watch on the way over. You have all the entertainment you need right across from you.

            You know it’s all the more excruciating to him, that there’s a group of older girls right across from him. They’re sitting right to you, but you take far more joy in smirking at him from across the aisle than you would by hitting on them. He’s trying not to throw up. You’re trying not to laugh too loudly.

            Mizuki is talking to Tae-san, who seems to be trying to act just as cool as Koujaku, as if she isn’t overly ecstatic to see her grandson again. They sit on the other side of Koujaku, Mizuki conversing somewhat wildly about the party tonight. He still hasn’t accepted how audacious Aoba was in his request for a party and you have to admit that you’re more than done listening to him complain about it, so Koujaku flipping his hair suavely behind his shoulder and then covering his mouth with his hand is where your attention is at.

            He knows you’re watching him. You’re not really keeping it much of a secret. You’re smiling subtly at him and he’s trying not to look you in the eye. He scowls every now and then, when he catches a glance of you, but then he quickly tries to look cool for the girls again. You can’t quite hear what they’re saying, but you’re fairly certain they’re under his spell anyway. You know you heard the word ‘handsome’ slung around a few times. Even better. These girls actually _want_ to talk to him, but if he opens his mouth, he’ll throw up all over their cute dresses.

            “It’s okay,” you comfort him quietly as you’re disembarking several minutes later. You stand on your toes to reach his ear to whisper. “I’ll wear one of those dresses for you. You can hit on me, instead.”

            Koujaku clutches the rail and throws up into the water.

            You know you should have some sort of _feeling_ about seeing Aoba again for the first time in over a year. You know Koujaku does at least; he’s probably close to throwing up again. The two of you hang back with Mizuki when Aoba and Mink first emerge in a throng of people from the same flight as them. You all let Tae-san be the first to embrace Aoba, who looks tanner than you remember.

            Mink is as big and fuckable as always. Though he seems gentler, and his hair is long and loose and wavy, and you immediately wonder how quickly their hair gets tangled with each other during sex.

            Tae-san spends a few minutes talking to Aoba and Mink alone. You steal a glance at Mizuki, who’s smiling wide, and Koujaku, who’s stuck between a scowl and a grin. You wonder what it’s like for him, to see the guy he’s always been in love with coming home to visit with his big, burly boyfriend. You wonder how you would feel if this was Mizuki coming home, and you were the poor sap stuck picking him and his lover up. You wince when you realize that this is probably one of the hardest things Koujaku’s ever done. It’s not really as entertaining as watching him try not to throw up on a boat.

            Aoba finally approaches the three of you, and you notice the glint in his eye when he comes to Koujaku. First he hugged Mizuki, then you (you considered squeezing his ass but decided against it at the last second), and then he gets to Koujaku. He pauses and lingers against Koujaku’s body. Aoba and Koujaku have been friends for so long. You wonder what their story is. You wonder how much they’ve been through together. You want to know. You don’t know why, but out of nowhere, you want to know how close Aoba and Koujaku are. You can’t imagine anyone being closer than you and Mizuki, but you know logically that’s not true. Aoba and Koujaku have known each other for practically their entire lives. You’ve known Mizuki for about three years.

            They pull apart and Koujaku is fighting tears. Aoba calls him a hippo and you don’t understand why, but Koujaku laughs heartily. He lifts the heel of his hand to his eye and dabs at it, and then Aoba turns away in embarrassment, ushering Mink forward. You take a breath. You can’t wait to see what he has to say.

            He takes only two steps forward, giant strides with his huge legs that seem to span the entire room. He’s so much taller up close than you remember and he gives you a surprisingly warm smile before he opens his mouth:

            “Hello.”

            You were expecting a bit more, but you suppose that’s about right.

            “Hi!” Mizuki says cheerfully. You’re sort of surprised that Mizuki is so on board with Mink and Aoba being an item. Maybe it’s a response to Koujaku’s deep and searing hatred of them. But you do know there’s some history between Mink and Aoba, not all of it good. And it’s “not good” in a very different way than your story with Mizuki can be “not good” at times. You don’t know much about it, but you imagine there’s been just as much work done on that relationship as there has been on yours, if not more.

            Mink smiles at Mizuki and they shake hands, your eyes glued to Mink’s face the whole time. You’ve never seen him smile but when he does, he’s so gentle and safe and you feel like a child with a crush for the first time. You understand what Aoba sees in him, at least. Mink moves to shake your hand too, so you take it and do the same, but you can’t think of anything to say. He stares into your eyes so sincerely that you think you see God.

            Then he counters to Koujaku, whose smile has disappeared. He regards Mink carefully, and for a second, you worry there’s going to be a fight. Well, you don’t exactly worry – you sort of hope there _will_ be, because Koujaku trying to take on someone as big as Mink would be hilarious. You’d be all for seeing Koujaku get his ass kicked right now. You suppose all the sympathy you had for him just moments ago has run out. You want Mink to bully Koujaku.

            But instead, Koujaku takes his hand and shakes it too, though he doesn’t exactly pretend to enjoy it. Their eyes are locked, and for all of Koujaku’s built up fury and challenging glares, Mink is all submissive acceptance, as if he’s acknowledging the conflict between them and is already trying to fix it. You wonder if he knows that Koujaku is in love with Aoba. You know Aoba and Mizuki don’t, but Mink is older. He’s like Tae-san. Older people always seem to know these things and Mink is so intimidating that you imagine he knows mostly everything. Challenging him mentally would be as formidable as challenging him physically. You plan on never doing either.

            When they break the handshake, Tae-san interrupts their staring contest to announce that you’re all heading back immediately, so that you can spend as much time at home as possible. Home. Midorijima is Aoba’s home, and Tae-san is his family. She wants to bring him home. But even when he isn’t home, he’s not alone. When he goes back to America, he’ll still have family. He’ll have Mink.

            You still don’t know where your home is either. You know Mizuki is your family, but you wonder if anywhere will ever feel like home.

            “I want to thank you for welcoming me back,” Mink says suddenly, his voice commanding attention. Aoba grabs his hand adoringly and he smiles at Tae-san. “I want to thank you for allowing me to be a part of your family, as Aoba has become part of mine.”

            Tae-san nods knowingly, and that’s the end of it. Mink smiles again and Tae-san leads her motley cavalcade of displaced gays out of the airport. Mizuki grabs your hand too, and you unwittingly lean into him. Koujaku walks next to Tae-san and you realize that he’s the only one without a romantic partner here.

            You wonder if Tae-san fills some sort of maternal hole for Koujaku, too.

            He throws up again on the way back home. You don’t think it’s because of motion sickness.

            Mizuki excuses you both from the welcome home lunch so he can go check on Aoba’s party preparations. He says it with the slightest edge in his voice and you smirk. You know he gave Aoba hell for his email, and Aoba glares at him as he starts to turn to walk towards Black Needle. You’re all outside Aoba’s house and when you turn to leave too, Aoba calls after you.

            “Oh, you have to go, too?”

            You look at Mizuki first, who shrugs at you. You look at Aoba in confusion.

            “What?”

            “I thought it was just Mizuki,” he says. You realize that Mizuki didn’t exactly mention you by name; he just said that he had to go get the place ready and you assumed that meant you would go with him. Why wouldn’t you? Why would you stay here and eat lunch with Aoba and his family? You’re not a part of _this_ family. You suddenly feel very panicked. Everyone’s eyes are on you and you don’t know what’s going on. “I thought you were going to stay. It’s not a big deal. I was just wondering.”

            You don’t really have to go, you’re just not really sure why they’d want you to stay.

            “He can stay,” Mizuki says suddenly. You look over at him and he has that trademark _“I’m trying to save you from this awkward situation”_ look on his face. A small smile, studious eyes… he’s trying to tell you something mentally, but you’re not sure what. He always seems to be able to size up situations better than you. “I thought I’d need him earlier but I don’t think I will after all. I’ll see you all tonight.”

            You’re left on the sidewalk with a group of people you really hardly know, as your boyfriend takes off in the opposite direction.

            You hardly know Aoba, but he just thought it was assumed that you’d be staying to – what? Eat? _Hang out?_

This feels familiar. This is what it was like the first time Mizuki ever wanted to spend time with you. You didn’t understand it then, and you don’t really understand it now… but you think you can handle it a bit better.

            “Okay,” you shrug. You almost tack on, _“I am fucking starving, anyway,”_ but you’re never sure when Tae-san’s good graces will run out. She usually only scolds you and saves the physical punishment for Koujaku and Mizuki. You’re not sure why you get away with more around her, but you’re certainly grateful for it. She’s as formidable as Mink, really.

            Lunch goes well and you get stuck sitting in Aoba’s living room all day, drinking cup after cup of coffee, until your hands are shaking and you don’t even notice. Mink, however, must notice, because he silently brings you a glass of water and you can’t stop staring at him. He catches you a few times, too. You’re interested in him. You do wonder what it would be like to sit in his lap and ride him until he comes inside of you, but you wonder that about a lot of people. Your interest Mink is a little bit different.

            Mink is sort of mysterious, you suppose, but he’s also an open book at the same time. At least, he seems to want people to think he is, and you wonder what happened. You’re achingly curious about what happened between him and Aoba. What changed him? The Mink you knew years ago was silent and brooding and unreadable. He was calculating and dark and you simply knew him as the intimidating criminal who broke out of prison and wanted revenge. You still don’t know what he did or what he wanted revenge for, but it seems that all of that is behind him now – behind them both, him and Aoba – and you wonder.

            You wonder how much of that was because of Scrap.

            It’s such a stark difference, Mink and Mizuki. Mizuki is still tortured by the failed Scrap. Mink was somehow freed by it. Of what, you’re not sure, but it was something dark and torturous and you can’t stop imagining a world where you aren’t belabored by your inability to feel. You can’t even imagine what Mizuki must feel like because you have no point of reference other than your tongue. You use that on Mizuki’s body a lot too, but you know it’s not quite the same as feeling Mizuki’s skin against yours. His stubble against your cheeks, his nails lightly scratching your back.

            If Scrap somehow brought Mink back from the precipice, could it do the same for you?

            You watch Aoba too. You try to gauge him as best you can. Is he hiding anything under the surface? Is he still tortured by anything? You’re not sure you’d really be able to tell one way or the other – you didn’t really know Aoba that well.

            But Koujaku did.

            He’s the first person you corner later that night at Black Needle. Before you even let Mizuki know you’re there, you pull on the back of Koujaku’s kimono and force him behind a booth. He grunts as you shove him against the wall and raises his arm to punch you but you grab his wrist and look him in the eye steadily.

            “Does Aoba seem different to you?”

            “What?”

            “Does Aoba seem any different than he used to be?”

            “Well,” Koujaku groans, his eyes travelling to Aoba and Mink as he lowers his fist. “Yeah. He’s been in America for a year with some – with _that_ guy. He’s not exactly the same Aoba I knew.”

            “Really?”

            Koujaku’s eyes are still on his best friend and his best friend’s lover. He bites his bottom lip a few times as his expression turns from angry to depressed to confused – you’re not sure what he is, but it’s a myriad of emotions all at once, and he finally sighs and shakes his head.

            “He’s the same,” he finally admits quietly. “He’s still Aoba. I just _wish_ he was different.”

            “Why?”

            “So I’d have a good reason to tell him not to go back.”

            Koujaku pushes you away gently and walks back into the crowd. You don’t think you and Koujaku are sizing Aoba up for the same reasons, but it’s still helpful. Koujaku wants to know if Mink is treating Aoba well; you want to know if Aoba is hiding anything. They’re both selfish reasons, but you don’t really care.

            Mizuki greets you from behind with a kiss against your ear, his hands around your waist, and some sort of filthy come-on. He’s already had a few to drink apparently, and you laugh so headily that all the air escapes your lungs. You tell him you’ll definitely let him bend you over later, when all these people have gone, but right now you’re at a party.

            “Hm,” he groans. “That’s not like you.”

            You turn to him with a frown.

            “What do you mean?”

            He smiles at you with half-lidded eyes and you realize he’s not being serious; he’s still trying to hit on you.

            “You love it when people watch you get fucked.”

            You bite your bottom lip for a second and then kiss him sloppily. That’s true. He’s right. You love when people watch you getting a dick in your ass, especially when it’s Mizuki’s dick. You still like showing off that Mizuki wants to fuck you and you highly doubt that feeling is ever going to pass.

            A few minutes later, Koujaku makes it clear that he is trying to immediately catch up to Mizuki – and surpass him. You imagine it’s because he can’t handle the thought of being at Aoba’s welcome home party, but you wonder if he’s going to get too wasted and do something he regrets. You hope so. You really, really hope so.

            The place is loud and crowded and you’re a little surprised at first, but then you remember how popular Aoba really was on this island, so it shouldn’t shock you that a lot of people wanted to come see him. Most of his time home this next month is probably going to be occupied with hanging out with old friends, just like most of his time tonight. But Mink seems more than happy to keep to himself in the corner of the bar of Black Needle, a glass glued to his hand all night long. You wonder what his drink of choice is. Probably something fancy and mature. You still don’t know much about alcohol, but you know that whatever Koujaku is doing shots with at the bar isn’t as sophisticated as whatever Mizuki keeps refilling Mink’s glass with. You don’t recognize the men he’s sitting with either, but they all seem to have the same drink. Aoba tells you later that it’s Scratch members, and you raise your eyebrows. You haven’t heard of Scratch in a long time. You’re shocked there’s anyone still around from Scratch, but you suppose that makes sense, too. This is just as much a party for Mink as it is for Aoba. Aoba is just the most popular of the couple.

            At one point, Koujaku slams a fist on the bar so loud that you jump in surprise and then he points behind you. You follow his finger to see that Aoba is sitting on Mink’s lap and you’re so taken by the image that you can’t stop staring. Koujaku does another shot. Mizuki leans onto his elbow from the other side of the bar and puts his lips to your ears.

            “Never thought we’d see something like that, huh?” he asks. You shake your head. Aoba is definitely not the sitting-on-someone’s-lap kind of guy, but he does seem to be blushing a little bit as he leans in for a quick kiss from Mink. “Do you think they’d have sex with us?”

            You gasp loudly.

            “I’ll go ask.”

            The thought hadn’t occurred to you before, but it’s a damn good one. Mizuki is so fucking smart. You’re dating the smartest guy on this island. But before you can take a second step, Koujaku is pulling you back by the shoulder.

            “Don’t,” he says monotonously. “We’re all drunk but I know that’s a bad idea.”

            “I don’t drink,” you remind him. He shakes his head.

            “Well, I’m trashed and I still know that it’s a bad idea.”

            He’s probably right, but you don’t really care. You look over at Mizuki and wink. He’s frowning, but when he gets the idea, he straightens up and smiles back. You’ll ask later. When Koujaku isn’t around.

            “Besides, Mizuki doesn’t want to have sex with Aoba.”

            You both look at Koujaku in surprise. Then you look at Mizuki again, who purses his lips together and seems to be mulling it over.

            “I didn’t really think about that,” he says. “I guess it would involve having sex with Aoba.”

            “You wouldn’t have sex with Aoba?” you ask. Mizuki shrugs, somewhat disgusted.

            “It’s different in a foursome,” he says. “Not alone, though, no. I guess not. I’ve never wanted to, anyway.”

            You’re sort of surprised. Again, though, you suppose you shouldn’t be. You kind of knew that already and you look over at Koujaku with a grin on your face.

            “But if they fuck us then that might mean they’re open to sex outside the relationship,” you tell him. “Maybe they’ll have sex with you, too.”

            Koujaku glares at you more menacingly than you think he ever has in his entire life.

            “Aw, leave him alone,” Mizuki says, patting Koujaku on the shoulder. You grin wider but do as you’re told until about half an hour later, when you find Koujaku smoking alone outside the bar.

            “You were really considering having sex with Mink just to sleep with Aoba, weren’t you?”

            Koujaku flicks some ash at you and tries to kick you before you run back inside.

            You’re lucky that you do too, because it’s just in time to see Mink laugh.

            A full, honest-to-God laugh, and it’s like watching a dog walk on its hind legs. Interesting. Somewhat entertaining. But also really bizarre.

            “Oh yeah,” Mizuki tells you, his eyes bloodshot and his breath reeking of beer. “He’s laughed a few times tonight. So weird. So weird. Did we ask if they would fuck us, yet?”

            You tell Mizuki to stop drinking and he doesn’t reply. He looks away a little annoyed, but he doesn’t seem to fill his cup with anything else but water the rest of the night.

            The party is winding down when you finally get what you’ve been wanting all night: Mink is alone in the corner of a booth, and Mizuki is drunkenly occupying Aoba’s time in a worthless argument about Rib. Mizuki is still passionate about his Rib team, and you’re glad for that. The only reason you’re dating Mizuki now is because he stopped getting so upset about Rhyme, but he still makes the occasional dig at you as an ex-Rhymer. Of course, you’re still convinced that one day you’ll get him in a Rhyme field and be able to feel him as he fucks you, but with Rhyme so highly monitored and difficult to activate now, Mizuki is paranoid about who can still see your sessions. You try not to tell him that that’s a baseless fear, even though it is. You don’t like to upset Mizuki and besides – you have a better idea now as to how to feel his dick inside of you.

            You slide into the booth next to Mink. You startle him but he doesn’t make a sound.

            “I have a question.”

            Mink stares at you for several seconds. He seems to be trying to understand what you just said, but you know he and Aoba speak Japanese all the time. You stare right back at him and then he nods.

            “Very well.”

            _Very well,_ he says. You roll your eyes. He’s like a grandpa or a teacher in a movie or something.

            “Tell me about Scrap.”

            His eyes change. They become serious and grave and his entire body tenses up. You figured it would. You know this is a touchy subject, but you have to know. May as well go in balls deep.

            “That’s not a question.”

            “Can Aoba still Scrap people?”

            Another silence. He isn’t ready for your tenacity, but you’re ready to prove that you’re serious. If Mizuki looks over and sees you talking to Mink, you’ll just tell him that you were asking about the foursome. Mink shakes his head.

            “Why do you want to know about Scrap?”

            This is when you falter. Is it best to tell him the whole truth? Or act like you’re just a nosy little brat, like everyone already thinks you are? You love when Mizuki calls you a brat in bed, especially when he’s punishing you, but this isn’t exactly a comparable situation.

            “I just want to know. Tell me or I’ll kiss Aoba again.”

            Mink smiles and you scowl at him.

            “I think you shouldn’t worry about Scrap,” he tells you slowly. You start to sneer. “You should go back to Mizuki and be grateful that you have him as a partner in your journey through life.”

            You want to slap Mink for using those words. It’s so romantic that you stick your tongue out in disgust. Mink chuckles again and then he leaves, approaching Aoba while he’s mid-yell at Mizuki during their argument still. He wraps a hand around Aoba’s hip and kisses his temple. Mizuki looks uncomfortable and you hate that Mink is so smart. You _are_ grateful that Mizuki chose you to be his partner in life.

            “Talk to me alone or I’ll kiss you again.”

            This new threat against Aoba is proving to be particularly useful. Aoba gasps in fear and hobbles off the stool he’s on and follows you to the back of the bar. Koujaku and Mizuki had gotten into a different argument, as they tend to do when they’ve been drinking, and no one notices your joint absences. Mink is in the bathroom. You forgot that Mink pees just like everyone else.

            “Tell me about Scrap.”

            Aoba immediately tenses, just like Mink. He looks away and makes a sound that’s a cross between a gasp and a groan. He shakes his head.

            “No, I don’t want to talk about that.”

            “I need to talk to you about it.”

            “Ask Mizuki,” he urges you. “If you want to know about it, ask him yourself. I can’t betray his confidence.”

            “No,” you shake your head, stepping forward and grabbing Aoba’s wrist. “No, I’m talking about Mink’s Scrap.”

            He pulls away in even more shock.

            “I _definitely_ can’t tell you about that.”

            “I don’t want you to tell me about his Scrap,” you say. He shakes his head again.

            “Then I’m confused. What do you want to talk about?”

            “I want to talk to you about Scrapping me.”

            From the look on Aoba’s face, someone might think you’d just asked Aoba and Mink to have a foursome with you and Mizuki.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noiz will come to remember these days at the first times he ever felt like his lungs were _full_

            You take a deep breath and sigh as heavily as you can. It’s twilight in Midorijima. You used to think of Virus and Trip at this time of day. What might be the most horrible of your memories of them happened at the time people refer to as twilight and you’ll always remember staring out the window and leaving your own body while the sky was purple. It was purple and pink and orange and blue all at once and all you were thinking about at the time was Mizuki and that’s all you’re thinking about now, too.

            It’s different now of course; back then you longed for him. Today, you wrap your fingers around his waist for just a second as he leans in to kiss your cheek. He grabs your plate off the table and takes it inside. You can hear him rinsing it off and shuffling around for several minutes before he rejoins you on the porch. He has tea in two mugs, a willful attempt to quit drinking so much alcohol. He even brings out a few sugar cubes for you and then winces as you dissolve them into your tea.

            “I’m exotic,” you remind him. Mizuki smiles and nods.

            “It’s so nice out tonight,” he says, sitting back against the chair with his hands wrapped around his mug. You take a sip of your own tea and stare at the grass in front of you. It is, you suppose, nice out tonight. The sky is beautiful and the company is too. You had a pretty good day at work and Mizuki made an excellent dinner. Your trees are just starting to bloom again and you do find something pleasing about the aesthetic of pastel pink flora against the darkening purple sky. But you know Mizuki isn’t referring to any of that.

            You take another deep breath. You don’t answer him and he probably doesn’t think much of it. You wish you could feel how nice it is out tonight.

            “Did you do any tattoos today?” you ask. He tips his head up as he swallows his tea. He doesn’t always tell you about his day anymore and you don’t know why. He used to tell you almost every detail and maybe you didn’t answer him enough or something. There’s nothing you love more than hearing about what Mizuki did all day, because you like feeling as if you were there. But he’s stopped recounting the events to you so you always have to ask him yourself.

            “I did a couple, kind of, but one was just a sketch on the paper first. She was a little nervous about committing. It was a rabbit, though.”

            You turn to him suddenly.

            “You did a rabbit tattoo today and didn’t think to tell me?”

            He laughs lightly but you’re serious. You wonder why he doesn’t tell you about his day anymore.

            “I didn’t know you’d care so much.”

            You frown and face forward again. You don’t really know how to tell him that of course you care. Of course you want to know. You just don’t want to tell him that you _like_ hearing about his day because you’re afraid that might sound too needy.

            “Well, when it’s a rabbit.”

            He smiles again and looks away. That’s all you say and that’s all he does. You take a deep breath.

            “Koujaku was wanting to have dinner with me sometime, by the way,” he says. “So we might do that tomorrow or the day after.”

            You shift uneasily in your seat. Mizuki and Koujaku have dinner alone a lot and you don’t _really_ mind. Mizuki always comes home to you and you’re not exactly jealous or scared that he’s cheating on you with _Koujaku_ , but you also don’t exactly like remembering that he and Koujaku have a relationship that you’re not a part of. You know you shouldn’t care about it, but you do.

            “Okay.”

            “You don’t have any plans tomorrow or the next day, do you?”

            “No.”

            “Okay,” Mizuki nods. “Then… I’ll probably just do it tomorrow. Is that okay?”

            “Sure.”

            Mizuki hums to himself in approval and you down the rest of your tea. You have to get over it. Mizuki and Koujaku are friends. You and Koujaku are… people who have met each other and not killed each other yet. That’s an improvement, really.

            “Hm,” Mizuki breathes out his nose softly as he sits back against the chair. You bought the outdoor furniture together: a long table that sits against the railing of the deck for when you have large groups over, a loveseat swing with a cloth cover so you can sit outside even when it’s raining, a small, two-person table and two seats on either side of it. That’s where you are now, and you shiver sometimes when you realize you get to sit outside with your boyfriend during twilight and eat dinner and have tea. Mizuki turns his head to you slightly. “So how was your day?”

            You take a deep breath.

            “Fine,” you say. Boring. Inconsequential. “Same as always.” You sat at a computer and coded for a couple hours, dicked around for another, spent two hours on lunch, coded for another hour, then spent the rest of the day finding new, strategic ways to look busy while not actually working. Your boss is really nice, so you don’t know why you treat the job so poorly. You _want_ the job. You want to take care of Mizuki and it pays _really_ well.

            “Nothing bad, though?”

            “Nothing bad,” you reply, finishing your tea and setting the cup on the table between you. “Until now.”

            Mizuki turns to you with his eyebrows raised.

            “What? What happened?”

            “You’re too far away from me,” you tell him, grinning as you push the table forward. “This table is in the way.”

            Mizuki stops you from moving the heavy furniture and reminds you that if you get caught fucking outside one more time you might get arrested. He convinces you into heading to the bedroom instead, but you can’t even make it there. You get him on the floor of the living room and all the cats disperse as if you just sprayed them with a hose. Mizuki is beneath you as you straddle his hips, your hands on either side of his head, bracing yourself against the floor. God, you love kissing him. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and all you do is sit on the couch and kiss – disgusting, awful morning breath and all. But he smells fucking incredible right now, like his cologne and soap and something else you can’t put your finger on – actually, it might be Koujaku, but hey, that guy smells really good all the time, too – and you probably smell like sweat and cat food.

            You really don’t understand what Mizuki sees in you sometimes, but you just pray he stays this oblivious for the rest of his life.

            “Can I fuck you?” you ask breathily, running your lips next to his ear. He groans and nods, his hips bucking up into you.

            “Didn’t you want to get to the bed first? No cat fur.”

            “I can’t wait.”

            You never meant to turn into a cliché. A romantic, sensual cliché. A cliché who gets to fuck his gorgeous boyfriend on the living room floor _daily_. But you did. You turned into the guy who says shit like, _“I can’t wait,”_ and, _“I have to have you,”_ and, _“I never knew a person could be this happy.”_ You turned into the guy who buys stuffed animals and chocolates and flowers and expensive wines. You turned into the guy who gets pampered by his boyfriend just as much as he pampers him in the first place. That guy. You turned into that guy.

            Oh well. You think you’ll manage.

            “God!” Mizuki cries as you’re pounding into him several minutes later. His arms are at his sides, his fingers digging deep into the carpet and pulling bits of fuzz out in his desperation. “Your dick!”

            “Do you like it?”

            “Yes!”

            “Tell me you like it.”

            “I like – it!” He’s panting, unable to catch his breath. You shake your head.

            “Tell me again.”

            “I love – your dick – Noiz!” He swallows hard. His eyes are screwed shut and his chin is pointed at the ceiling. He must be close.

            “Tell me you love getting fucked by my pierced dick.”

            “I love getting fucked by your pierced dick!”

            You also don’t mean to be the guy who growls and practically devours his boyfriend during sex, but you are, especially when Mizuki comes all over himself. His orgasms are incredible, particularly when he’s bottoming: he’s so much _squeakier_ than you expect, even when you expect it. You snarl in pleasure and kiss Mizuki’s chin sloppily, your lips closing around his entire jaw because you’re too distracted by how warm and tight he is to aim right.

            You’re jerking him off as hard and fast as you can and you can’t believe how well you know him. Slow around the head, fast down to the base. Only graze his balls with your fingertips a few times now and then, to make him ache for it even more. You never had an aversion to fucking the same person more than once, but no one ever wanted _you_ twice. You’ve been fucking Mizuki for over a year now, and he’s been fucking you, too. He gets a lot more domineering when he tops you, which is probably why you like seeing him like this so much. Big, bad Rib fighter, begging you to fuck him harder with your big, metal cock.

            That sounds so ridiculous after the fact, but in the moment, it really gets you going.

            You come inside of him, your hips thrusting so hard that his entire body bounces. His pecs are so big that the muscles jiggle as you pound into him, his ass so tight that your piercings send little pricks of pain all the way through your dick to bring you to orgasm. It’s the only way you can really come from topping him; he has to stay tight enough to pull on the metal in dick. He says he doesn’t mind though. He likes just a little bit of pain and besides, he knows if he’s in _too much_ pain.

            The implication there, of course, is that you don’t. You can’t. You don’t think about that right now though. You just focus on cleaning your boyfriend up.

            “Did I go too hard?”

            You wouldn’t _have_ to go too hard if you could feel your dick inside of him.

            “Nuh uh,” Mizuki says in a daze, still naked on the living room floor. He has streaks across his skin from the damp washcloth you used to clean his cum up, and you gather him in your arms to carry him to the shower yourself.

            “Let me clean you up,” you say softly against the back of his neck, your hands unable to stop roaming around his body. You can’t feel any of it, but you can see it in the mirror as you both wait for the water to heat up. His muscles jump and twitch as your fingertips ghost over them. He’s so sensitive and you love it.

            He makes you promise not to touch his dick in the shower. You always try to start a second round but tonight he’s too worn out and so oversensitive that it hurts, so instead you sit him down on the bench in the shower and rub his sore muscles. His shoulders mostly, but you also wash his hair for him too, and massage his scalp. He’s practically falling asleep in your arms, so you turn off the water and dry him off, then lead him to bed and hand him his shorts.

            “Let’s go to bed.”

            He moans at you.

            “Gotta check you out first.”

            Ah…

            You take a deep breath.

            You lie back on the bed naked, and Mizuki looks you over for marks. Then he falls asleep on top of you, also naked. You accidentally fall asleep with a boner at nine-thirty.

            It’s earlier than your usual bedtime, but sometimes your heart still races over the idea that you _have_ a bedtime at all. You love it. You love that you and your beautiful boyfriend go to sleep by midnight so that you can be up by seven to spend an hour together in the morning before work. You love that you fall asleep holding Mizuki’s hand and wake up holding his waist; you love that he makes the coffee while you make the toast and then he sits in your lap as you play around on your Coils for half an hour while having your breakfast. Sitting on the couch with Mizuki wakes you up as much as the coffee does, and you’re happy. You are. You’re really happy to be with Mizuki. You always wanted this. You always wanted to be normal. And you don’t know how you deserved to be normal with _Mizuki_ of all people, but you learned to stop questioning that a long time ago.

            You’re happy. You get to be normal with Mizuki.

            But you’re not normal.

            You can’t feel how nice it is outside. You can’t feel his gentle kisses on your temple. You can’t feel when he digs in too hard with his fingernails during sex and then you have to see him close to tears in apology as he wipes your shoulders down with antiseptic and places a bandage over the cuts. You can’t feel anything and Mizuki is the one who ends up crying over it. Even when you’re the one getting hurt, you’re hurting Mizuki.

            The next day, a coworker catches you daydreaming. He doesn’t give a shit, he just wants to ask you a question. But he prefaces it with, _“Can’t wait to get home, huh?”_ and you stare at him until he’s uncomfortable enough to ask his question and get his answer and leave you alone. But he’s right. You can’t wait to get home.

            You are really, truly, genuinely happy. You do the routine couple things you always saw other people do and you do them with Mizuki, the hottest guy on the island. You wake up, you eat breakfast, you go to work, you make money to spend on Mizuki, then you go home and fuck him until you’re both too tired to do anything but pass out.

            But you don’t necessarily fall asleep just to do it all again the next day.

            You suppose that’s really why you’re happy. You have the routine. You do the cliché things.

            But Mizuki isn’t really a cliché.

            Some nights you both sit at Black Needle until three in the morning and you have to help Mizuki hobble home. Sometimes you team up with Koujaku and some of Beni Shigure to go fuck with Akushima. Sometimes a group of Dry Juice accompanies you to Old Platinum Jail, the new name for the area that Toue used to rule over, and you explore. It’s a stupid name but the island is in the process of renaming it. You don’t really care what they rename it, but Mizuki does. This is Mizuki’s home. He really cares about Platinum Jail, because he’s been in it, even if he doesn’t fully remember it.

            Aoba has been in it, too.

            So has Mink.

            Sometimes you and Koujaku get left behind when Mizuki and Dry Juice traipse all over the place, close to tears, having emotional moments with each other as they talk about this awful place being rebuilt into better memories. You don’t have that with Mizuki.

            Neither does Koujaku.

            When Aoba and Mink want to go too, you and Koujaku take a deep breath. Your eyes meet across the room and he nods at you. _We have something in common_ , he’s saying. _We’re not a part of this. We never were and we never can be._

So the two of you stay behind. Mizuki and Aoba are shocked, but Mink nods and ushers them out of your apartment. He seems to understand already. You and Koujaku aren’t going to intrude on a memory that isn’t yours. How does Mink know everything? Is it because he’s so old? Old people seem to know everything. The same is true of Tae-san. You’re sort of annoyed that he’s so perceptive but kiss Mizuki on the cheek before they take off anyway. Then you turn to Koujaku, who doesn’t have anyone to kiss goodbye.

            “Are you happy with Mizuki?” he asks, fifteen minutes into your comfortable silence. You’re on your laptop and he’s on his Coil. You’re on the floor and he’s on the couch. You don’t need to speak to each other. But Koujaku seems to have a lot to say.

            “Yes.”

            “And do you think Mizuki is happy with you?”

            You hesitate. You swallow hard. Koujaku shakes his head.

            “I didn’t mean that to sound like he wouldn’t be,” he reassures you. “I think he is. I _know_ he is. I just want to make sure _you_ know he is.”

            You turn your head to look at Koujaku in great offense. How _dare_ he look out for your mental and emotional wellbeing? Who the hell does he think he is, a _nice_ guy?

            “Thanks.”

            You turn back to your laptop. You know Koujaku cares about you. And not just because he cares about Mizuki. He’s grown to give a shit about you and you’ve done the same. You’re just not as good at putting it out there.

            “You’re welcome,” he grumbles. “Not trying to get gay here or anything, I’m just saying…”

            You turn back to him again.

            “That’s kind of hard to claim when you’ve had your dick inside of me.”

            He winces and you grin. Sometimes you both forget that you’ve had sex before.

            “I regret everything about that,” he tells you. “Even I have moments of weakness.”

            “Yeah, a lot of people do when confronted with how nice my ass is.”

            “You have a pizza ass,” he grunts, and you’re too amused to insult him back. You turn back to your laptop again with a satisfied smile. Koujaku’s an alright guy. And he smells good, too.

            “I’m happy with Mizuki,” you tell him after another silent thirty minutes. “And I’m happy you’re okay with me being happy with Mizuki.”

            You catch a glimpse of his face in the reflection of your laptop. He’s touched. His eyebrows are slanted and he opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.

            Neither of you say another word to each other for the next three hours, until Mizuki, Mink, and Aoba come back with dinner. Aoba remarks sarcastically that he’s surprised the house isn’t burned down with the two of you left in it alone, and Mizuki smiles as he sets out plates for everyone.

            “No, they get along much better now, don’t they?”

            He grins at you and you look over at Koujaku.

            You and Koujaku have something in common: you’re the ones who are left out.

            But you don’t want to be left out anymore.

            “Well,” Koujaku bristles. “We do it for Mizuki.”

            You think the four of them look to you for a reply, but Koujaku’s words hit you hard: _We do it for Mizuki._

            You do. You do almost everything for Mizuki. When you’re doing things for yourself, you’re doing them for Mizuki. That was Mizuki’s biggest issue before: you didn’t want to get better for yourself, you wanted to get better for Mizuki. And over time you started to understand why that was a problem. Now you want to be normal. But you want to be normal for Mizuki.

            You would do almost anything for Mizuki. There’s not a single other person in the world you would go through Scrap for, but you would do it for Mizuki.

            No. Actually – there is one more.

            “Ah, big brother!” Emmerich coos into the Coil. It’s been a while since you’ve heard German. It makes you smile, especially when it’s coming from your little brother. “I haven’t heard from you in days!”

            You don’t reply right away. You smile slightly at him and he rests his head in his hand with a loud sigh. His hair is much scragglier than before. It looks like he hardly even brushes it. He’s wearing a large sweatshirt over a button up, a stark contrast to the suave, eighteen-year-old businessman you met a year ago, but looks happier than ever.

            “I miss you,” you tell him and he smiles emphatically.

            “Aw… then why didn’t you call?”

            “I’m calling now.”

            _“I’m calling now,”_ he mocks. It makes you laugh. “Well, finally, my busy big brother deigns to call me.”

            “I have something serious to talk to you about.”

            “Oh?” He straightens up, but the devious smile doesn’t leave his lips. “Serious, huh? What is it?”

            You remember spending your nights in the hotel room with him. Falling asleep holding his hands. Watching him hug his stuffed deer to his chest. Crying until you were out of tears. _Talking. So_ much talking. Talking like you’d never talked before. You were talking so much then that remembering it is embarrassing. Then again, you talk a lot more now, too. Mizuki says it’s a good thing, but you’re not so sure.

            Still. It was a good thing to talk to Emmerich.

            It _is_ a good thing to talk to Emmerich.

            He knows a part of you no one else does. In this scenario, Mizuki is the one left out.

            “If I said I found a… way. To… cure me…”

            The smile vanishes from Emmerich’s lips immediately. You knew it would. You should have eased into it probably, but you don’t really know the protocol for this. There isn’t one, really. Emmerich has always been concerned about your condition in a way that Mizuki isn’t. Mizuki checks you over every night to make sure you’re okay, but he’s never considered that you would be better off without it. As far as he’s concerned, you _can’t_ get rid of it, so there’s no reason to even entertain the possibility. He’s never thought of Scrap as a solution, and even before Mink and Aoba’s reactions, you knew better than to suggest it to him.

            Emmerich, however –

            “Is there?” he asks, his voice entirely different. It’s not light and happy anymore, it’s dark and serious and asking you a question that expects an answer. You don’t really have one.

            “Maybe.”

            “Don’t ‘maybe’ me,” he says. “Why would you say that unless you found one?”

            “It’s not… exactly…”

            “It’s not exactly real, is it?”

            You look him in the eye. This has come up before. Some back-alley way to cure your condition that might end in your death. Emmerich has a hard time grappling with whether or not the risk is worth it. To Mizuki, the answer is clear. But to Emmerich –

            To Emmerich, the answer isn’t quite as obvious because the memories attached to your condition are much darker – and much deeper. Mizuki knows what your parents did to you, but he doesn’t _know_. Emmerich was the one who saw them berate you. He’s the one who says he still remembers the empty look on your face at nine-years-old when they let you out for a night and you ended up hugging Emmerich too tight. They screamed at you but you didn’t budge. They pulled you away with such force that you went toppling into the coffee table, but you didn’t cry out. You didn’t do a thing as they picked you up and carried you back to your corner of the house, verbally abusing you the whole time. Emmerich knows that. Mizuki doesn’t.

            To Emmerich, your condition isn’t just the present and the future. It’s the past. His entire past. He was born into the family with your shame already hanging over the name, and it was his job to cover it up. It was your parents who swept you under the rug and put Emmerich in front of it. He was the distraction. He was the new golden child, and he was the one who was supposed to keep the attention away from the lump under the carpet.

            To Emmerich, it’s abuse. Years and years – a lifetime of abuse. Abuse, manipulation, coercion – you still think you’re actually the lucky one for getting out. He’s the one who was raised by monsters. And at times, you still think of yourself as a monster. It makes sense, since your parents were monsters, so that’s all they’d be able to breed, right?

            But then you remember Emmerich. He’s not a monster. He’s nothing close to a monster, and you suppose there is some hope for you, yet.

            To Emmerich, your condition isn’t normal. And it isn’t manageable. To Emmerich, it caused you years of abuse and neglect and, ironically, pain. To Emmerich, you left because you couldn’t handle it and you were reckless because it didn’t matter. To Emmerich, it’s a reminder of the years he spent in Germany, under your father’s thumb, positive that you were dead. He was sure that you’d gotten killed in your carelessness and you probably did it on purpose.

            To Emmerich, a cure is a Godsend.

            “It’s not a sure thing,” you say quietly. He glares at you and waits for you to continue. “There’s a guy here. He can… do this thing. He’s… cured people before. Of other things. I don’t know what, but… it’s possible he could cure a physical condition, too.”

            “A guy?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Who is he?” he asks. “What’s his name?”

            You look away and take a deep breath.

            “It’s Aoba.”

            Emmerich pulls his head back in revelation. He knows who Aoba is. You and Mizuki have told him all about Aoba and Mink. Even Koujaku has tried to tell him about them, through his broken German and shitty Coil translations. He knows that Aoba was Mizuki and Koujaku’s friend and that you kissed him in Heibon and that he was whom you once _thought_ you’d end up connecting with. You think he regards him as sort of a mythical being, because he’s never met him – he’s only heard the stories.

            “He can cure people?”

            “Well…”

            You lick your lips.

            “Yes?”

            “Maybe. I don’t know if he could cure this. And sometimes… it doesn’t end up well.”

            “Doesn’t end up well?”

            You never really told Emmerich the extent of what happened to Mizuki during Scrap, but he knows enough.

            “He’s the guy… who broke Mizuki.”

            Emmerich’s eyes go wide.

            “He broke Mizuki with the power you want to use for your condition?”

            “Yes,” you say, but quickly add: “But he also cured Mink. You know, the guy he’s with now. Well, he did something to him. They’re home. They’re visiting here for a couple months and Mink’s a different person. I know he used Scrap on him. And I think he can do the same for me.”

            “Scrap?”

            “That’s what it’s called.”

            “Hm.”

            “I could end up like Mink… or Mizuki.”

            Emmerich looks at you in worry.

            “But Mizuki is okay now.”

            “Yeah,” you nod grimly. “But only because he’s stronger than the average human. Mentally, at least. Well, physically too, I guess. But he has a strong mind. It took forever for Morphine to brainwash him and he came out of the coma Scrap put him in in just a matter of weeks. I might not be so lucky.”

            Emmerich looks away from the camera. He stares down at the floor sadly. You can tell he’s jiggling his foot nervously as he thinks about what you’ve just told him. You haven’t even really asked him anything yet, but you suppose he gets the picture: you want his advice. He’s your family, so he won’t steer you wrong.

            “But…” he says finally, looking up at you again with tired eyes. “If you _do_ get lucky…”

            You take a deep breath.

            “Then I might be normal. Finally, I might be normal.”

            You can’t say those words to Mizuki. To suggest that you’re not already normal sends Mizuki into an angry tailspin. He gets upset and can’t decide if he wants to kiss you or slap you – not that he’d ever really _slap_ you, but he tugs on your hair sometimes and folds his arms and pouts.

            To Emmerich, being able to feel would make you normal. And it would make you happy.

            “I think you should do it.”

            You look at Emmerich almost helplessly. You knew he was going to say that, and you wonder if you only called him to feel some validation in your own decision.

            “I already asked if he could still do it.”

            “What’d he say?”

            “He wouldn’t answer. He doesn’t want to do it. And Mink told me to leave it alone, too.”

            “I think you should keep pressing.”

            You nod.

            “I think so, too.”

            Emmerich sighs and looks like he’s close to tears. His lips tug into a frown.

            “I don’t care what illnesses you have,” he says. “I don’t care what you look like or what you need from me. I’ll give you anything. I’ll love you no matter what.”

            “I know that,” you say in confusion. He shakes his head.

            “No, I’m saying that I love you no matter what conditions you have. If you need me to come there and move in with you and watch you every second of every day to make sure you’re not hurt, I’d do it.”

            “Emmerich –”

            “I love you, no matter what.”

            You stare at him.

            “I—”

            “But you’d be better off without this condition.”

            You purse your lips tightly and frown back at him. You’re not going to cry, but it looks like he is.

            “You’d be healthier and happier and everyone around you would be, too. But fuck everyone else around you. This would be for _you,_ not them. Because everyone around you already takes care of you, and they wouldn’t be doing that if they didn’t want to.”

            “You mean Mizuki.”

            “And Koujaku.”

            You laugh.

            “You think Koujaku takes care of me?”

            He cocks his head to the side.

            “He doesn’t?”

            You look around the room in confusion before you settle back on him.

            “What – what do you think my relationship to Koujaku is?”

            “He’s a sweet guy,” Emmerich shrugs. “He says he cares about you. He says he tries to watch out for you when Mizuki’s not around.”

            “When – when did he say this?”

            “A couple weeks ago.”

            “A couple weeks ago? How? You were in Germany a couple weeks ago.”

            “We talk online.”

            “You _what?”_

“I talk to Koujaku all the time!” he shouts. “The translations are bad but he’s been learning a little bit of German.”

            “What are you doing talking to Koujaku?” you cry. “Stop. Stop talking to Koujaku. He’s not for you.”

            “What does that mean?”

            “Emmerich, are you trying to hook up with Koujaku?”

            Your little brother’s voice gets caught in his throat. That’s enough of an answer for you and you stand up, enraged.

            “Stop talking to Koujaku!”

            “Okay!” he shouts. “I’ll stop talking to Koujaku! Calm down! All that’s on the screen right now is your crotch, I need you to sit down.”

            “I’ll calm down when you tell me that you’re not going to get into Koujaku’s pants!”

            “You _have_ to shut up. I was trying to be sweet and tell you something important here and you had to get all sidetracked by Koujaku.”

            You take a deep breath.

            You sit down, your eyes closed, and expel all the air out your nose. When you finally open your eyes again, Emmerich is grinning at you and you sneer at him.

            “Don’t smile at me like that.”

            “Hey, I’m just trying to tell you that I don’t care what’s wrong with you. I’ll always love you. And I know Mizuki will, too. But I also know that you’d be better off fixing this condition.”

            You start to calm down a little more and nod at him.

            “That’s true.”

            “I am not trying to change you.”

            “I know.”

            “And I’m not trying to get into Koujaku’s pants.”

            “That’s good.”

            “He’s trying to get into mine.”

            You take a deep breath.

            Emmerich grins again and swears to God that he’s just joking, that Koujaku isn’t hitting on him, he’s just trying to learn a new language and that’s all it is, he swears. Don’t take this out on Koujaku.

            You think of all the ways that you can kill Koujaku and make it look like an accident.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY-- so I never heard from the person who sent that commission two weeks ago. If you sent a commission to me through my Google docs form that involved poly!DMMD and haven't heard back, please get in touch! There was a bug in my system! It's fixed but I need your contact info!
> 
> Anyway....... hope you like this stupid fic


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noiz will come to think of today as the time he felt like Koujaku, drinking his sorrows away, even if there was no alcohol involved. and then he got a boner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> light and loving smut ahead

            It’s times like these that you wish you drank.

            You knock another one back – that’s the phrase people use, right? – and sigh as you look up at the bartender. You don’t remember his name. He’s new. Mizuki introduced you but you can’t be fucked to remember every single Black Needle employee. He meets your gaze warily and points at you glass.

            “Another one?”

            You grin at him.

            “Hit me.”

            That’s the phrase people use, right?

            He uses his hose-thing that Mizuki has told you the name for but you never remember. The soda fizzes from brown to cream and you wink at him as he slides it back to you.

            “Put it on my tab.”

            You grin at him. He rolls his eyes. He knows who you are. He knows you don’t have a tab. And he wouldn’t be putting eight sodas on a tab, anyway.

            “Good one,” he says with a quick raise of his eyebrows. He turns away and goes back to his actual customers. You tilt your head back and start to chug the soda down your throat. It burns, but it feels so good. Mizuki says watching you do this is worse than watching Koujaku shotgun a beer, but it’s the only way you can get any sort of high. Caffeine and acid. Not acid the drug. Just the acid that comes from carbonation. So you’re not as hardcore as Mizuki or Koujaku? Whatever.

            You look around Black Needle. Mizuki is out right now, you don’t remember where. Maybe getting supplies for the shop or helping an inventory list or something. You’re on your lunch break and enjoy the way the employees scurry around so busily when you’re there, as if you’ll report back to Mizuki if they aren’t working. You don’t care. You aren’t working, why should they?

            It’s not like you’re _actually_ depressed – at least, not about anything new. But you figure finding out that your little brother is hitting on the guy you like least on this island warrants time to mope. You want to drown your sorrows, like you always see on TV. You don’t actually care, you just like the normalcy of it.

            Really, you don’t give a fuck about what Emmerich does. Not in that sense, at least. You don’t care what he becomes or what he wants to be or who he is or who he wants to date. You’re not ever going to reject him and you certainly don’t have any desire to control him. He’s still a virgin, or at least, still believes in the concept of virginity, and that’s sweet to you. It’s sweet that he cherishes his own body. You’re glad that he feels the need to protect himself, that he isn’t actively trying to hurt himself like you were at his age. You regret that now, because now you have things to live for and Emmerich is one of them.

            …He just _had_ to choose Koujaku.

            You sneer at the wall behind the bar and down the soda you left in the glass. You still can’t exactly drink an entire glass in one go. One day, though. You’re practicing. You’ll just keep at it until –

            “H-hey!”

            Someone grabs your shoulder roughly and pulls you off the stool.

            “Get over here, _right now.”_

Koujaku’s voice is so gruff and serious that you actually sort of relax your entire body as some kind of defense mechanism as he drags you to the back door, opens it, and shoves you outside. You brace your hands against a wall to catch yourself and then you grit your teeth.

            “What the hell is your problem? What’d you do that for?”

            “We need to talk.”

            “That’s why you grabbed me and shoved me outside like a maniac? You could have just asked.”

            “It’s important. You’re an idiot.”

            You roll your eyes and straighten out your clothes as you try to gather yourself. He managed to pick you off your stool and run you outside in less than five seconds, it seems. You run your hands down your face, just to make sure you didn’t cut or scrape anything. It seems dry, so you look up at him with calm eyes.

            “That’s something I haven’t heard in a while,” you tell him. You’re genuinely curious to see what he wants, but you’re not exactly willing to devote too much time to him right now. “Not that it isn’t still true.”

            “Don’t feel sorry for yourself. You’re being a fool.”

            “I am,” you agree with a nod. “By sticking around here any longer—”

            He grabs your shoulder when you try to leave and slams you back against the wall. It’s so much harder than you were expecting that you’re actually shocked. You look up at him with wide eyes and an open mouth.

            “What are you –”

            “Aoba told me what you asked him.”

            It takes you a moment to really understand, but when it clicks with you, you see red.

            You’re not sure why; it’s kind of Aoba’s prerogative to tell whoever he wants, but you’re surprised it wasn’t Mizuki. Why Koujaku, of all people? Because he’s a sounding board probably; an easy, non-threatening sounding board. He’ll do anything Aoba asks of him, including _not telling Mizuki._ And of course, if he perceives you to be making any trouble for Aoba, he’ll confront you, too. You scowl at him angrily and shove his arm away.

            “That’s not your business.”

            “It is, because it’s Aoba’s business and he just made it mine.”

            “Well, that’s not on me. I didn’t ask to include you in this. That was against my wishes.”

            “It doesn’t matter. Aoba didn’t ask to be included on this, either. But you asked him, and then you asked _Mink_. I’m just going to cut to the chase. This is a stupid idea, Noiz and you’d be a fool to pursue this any further.”

            It’s true that you’re used to being called an idiot, but that doesn’t mean that you’re still as complacent with it as you used to be. It used to be during sex – or just before sex. Or just after sex. Either way, if you’re not about to have an orgasm any time soon, then this just isn’t worth it.

            “I really don’t care about your opinion on this. Let me go.”

            “No.”

            “Really? You’re going to corner me here in the back of Dry Juice? Until what, someone comes for a cigarette in ten minutes?”

            “I’m not going to let you hurt Mizuki.”

            You shake your head, trying as hard as you can to not blow up.

            There is nothing you hate more than people implying that you’re going to hurt Mizuki. Other than people implying you’re going to hurt him on purpose.

            “If you don’t get out of my way…”

            “You’re normal, Noiz!” His words come loudly and suddenly, and they come somewhat genuinely, too. He’s frustrated. He’s frustrated with you but it’s not like he usually is. He usually rolls his eyes or crosses his arms or leaves the room. This is a different kind of frustration. You can’t quite put your finger on it. “You’re just like me and Mizuki… you’re just like everyone else! You always have been! It’s just _you_ who’s convinced you’re not. I mean, I don’t know your life story, but…whatever. Maybe I don’t know you at all. Maybe I’m talking out of my ass. But you _don’t_ need Scrap. You _don’t_ need to change for Mizuki to accept you. You don’t need to change for anyone to accept you.”

            “You are so stupid, Koujaku.”

            He seems offended. He furrows his brows and takes a step back.

            “What’re you –”

            “You think I want to be able to feel so that you will _accept_ me?”

            “Well, not _me,_ per se, but –”

            “You think I feel abnormal because I just haven’t been _accepted_ by the people who are supposed to be my friends? You think I want to go through something like Scrap so that you guys will be _cool_ with me?” Koujaku’s face remains confused, but his body slackens. “You think I don’t _know_ that Mizuki would be devastated? You think I have _no clue_ what my boyfriend has been through? I know Mizuki. I know what happened. I know how Scrap hurt him. I didn’t make this decision in a day, you know.”

            “I know, I just –”

            Koujaku’s voice is unbelievably soft, but you don’t let him speak.

            “No. I don’t need any answers. I need you to get out of my way. Just… back off. Aoba didn’t need to tell you. He only did it because he knows he has you wrapped around his finger and if he calls, you’ll come. Like a little puppy.”

            You don’t know _what_ Aoba knows. You get the feeling he has no clue about Koujaku’s feelings, but you do. You know exactly how Koujaku feels about Aoba, and you just want to say something to hurt him back. You shove him out of your way finally and go back inside. You stand by the bathroom doors for a moment, trying to catch your breath, when Koujaku’s voice is next to your ear:

            “I don’t know _why_ he fell for you, but he did.”

            You ball your hands into fists at your side and will yourself not to punch him.

            “Probably because I suck his dick better than anyone else,” you say instead, hoping that’ll make him leave.

            “Ha,” he scoffs. You hate that he isn’t as affected by that as you wanted him to be. “You can’t fool me. Mizuki is the one who’s good at sucking dick.”

            You hate that you’re sort of offended.

            You whirl around to him and glare.

            “What the hell, I’m great at sucking dick.”

            “The point is, I don’t know why he finds so much comfort in you, but he does. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you hadn’t thought about him beforehand. I know you care about him a lot and that you’re trying to be a better person for him. But all the more reason not to _do anything_ to _fuck_ this up. He needs you as much as he needs me at this point, maybe more. So when _you_ get hurt, _he_ gets hurt. You need to start realizing that.”

            Then Koujaku walks away and you’re annoyed. You’re annoyed that he’s right, in some ways, and you’re annoyed that he wasn’t hurt by what you said about Aoba. You’re annoyed that he listened to you. You’re annoyed that he gave you the time of day. You’re annoyed… that he heard what you said, and took it to heart. You know Mizuki. He accepted that.

            Here they go again, these people. These people, who act like you’re some kind of fucking human being who deserves respect. Who the fuck do they think they are?

            “Hey!” you shout after him. He turns around with a deep breath and you lick your bottom lip menacingly, cock your head to the side and narrow your eyes at him.

            “I’ll back off if you do.”

            “What are you talking about?” he asks, taking a few steps closer to bridge the gap between you. You smile because he looks worried; he doesn’t know what you’re about to say and he doesn’t want you shouting his business to the practically silent tattoo parlor. You don’t have anything that juicy, but it’s still important to you, not that you’re being honest in any way. You’re not going to back down from this, but you may as well see if you can use it to scare Koujaku into leaving your little brother alone.

            “I won’t… _pursue_ this any further… if _you_ don’t _pursue_ my little brother any further.”

            Koujaku’s eyes dance in front of yours as a smile slowly creeps on his lips. You can’t stop a smile from gracing your own face either, though where his is cheeky and challenging, yours is menacing, if somewhat amused. You want to know what he’s going to do about this.

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grins. It’s a shit-eating grin if you’ve ever seen one. He’s loving this. “I started taking a German class a few months ago. He’s just helping.”

            “Just helping, huh?”

            “Strictly platonic. Just German.”

            “You picked German, of all languages to learn?”

            He shrugs.

            “It sounds pretty.”

            “No it doesn’t.”

            He laughs softly.

            “I think it does. Why, I’d listen to you speak it all day if I could.”

            Your grin widens. You kind of love this. This weird dance with Koujaku that you haven’t had in so long as an effort to get along for Mizuki.

            “And you decided to learn this when? A few months ago?”

            “I thought it was time to learn some international culture. You know, Mizuki has all that weird German sex with you. I was inspired.”

            “Inspired by my sex life, huh?”

            “I guess you could put it that way.”

            “So you only ask my brother for help with… German?”

            You suppose that part is actually try, though you’re still fairly aware that Koujaku’s reasoning for learning the language in the first place must have been an interest in Emmerich. He bites his bottom lip for a moment and you legitimately consider jumping him right then and there. There’s something about fighting with Koujaku that turns you on.

            “Just German. There’s never been anything… inappropriate.”

            You _don’t_ care what Emmerich does, but him seriously dating Koujaku would complicate things to no end. And Koujaku’s answer makes it abundantly clear that there certainly _has_ been _something_ inappropriate going on and there is nothing you want _less_ than to hear about it.

            “Well…” You brace yourself for your own bluff; your little brother’s sex life is not exactly something you want to talk about in detail, even if what you’re saying is a lie: “Then how does he know how small your dick is?”

            Koujaku’s eyes go wide and that shit-eating grin completely disappears.

            “He _what?!”_

You laugh loudly and slap his cheek with the tips of your fingers. That was easy enough.

            “Close your mouth, idiot. I’m screwing with you.” You take a few steps back and before you know it you’re turning on your heel to run. Koujaku is chasing you and you’re deftly outrunning him.

            Just like the good old days.

            You actually wrestle Koujaku all the way back to your place and you can’t stop laughing the whole time. He got a few good punches in, accompanied by assurances that his dick _isn’t_ small (“He’s never seen my dick! And it’s not small! Don’t you dare tell him that!” he screeched, to which you replied, “I’ve seen it, you idiot! We’ve had sex before! It’s tiny!”). It’s _not_ small, but you love that he actually gives a shit about dick size so you let him suffer. When you finally get in your house, you manage to shut him out and he finally leaves you alone. You look out the peephole to see him trudging away and you open the door one last time to snap a quick picture of his sullen retreat. For some reason, Koujaku’s back as he hunches over in anger is hilarious to you and you send it to Mizuki immediately –

            You hear his Coil go off in the bedroom. You didn’t know he was home.

            “Mizuki?”

            He’s in the closet, throwing clothes into the hamper and you startle him when you say his name. He smiles that bright smile that he gives when he’s pleasantly surprised, and after a while, you admit it to him:

            “I got in a fight with Koujaku and now I have a boner.”

            He smirks at you and drops to his knees immediately. He unzips your pants and licks his lips just like Koujaku did and you actually whimper as he takes your dick out and starts to jerk you off.

            “My friend got you turned on, did he?”

            You frown as you try to ignore Koujaku and focus on Mizuki now. But he’s expecting an answer and you really want his mouth around your dick, so you eventually nod as best you can.

            “But not – not like it sounds…”

            “Oh? Then how was it?”

            “I don’t… know why…” You lick your own lips now and stare down at him, faintly aware that you must look ridiculous from this angle. You have like, nine chins from Mizuki’s perspective, but your eyes flutter closed as he finally presses his lips to the head of your dick, kissing the piercing there softly. Just _watching_ Mizuki do this turns you on.

            “So… I’m not good enough anymore?” he pouts and you shake your head. Even as a joke, Mizuki thinking he doesn’t satisfy you is the most terrifying thing you can hear.

            “No!” you say loudly. “You’re… the best. Please…”

            Mizuki grins and kisses your dick again.

            “Ask me. Tell me exactly what it is you want me to do.”

            You groan.

            “Suck me off… please?”

            He does. He plays with your balls and nips down your shaft and tugs on each piercing as he sucks you off, and lets you finish on his face, which is his favorite place for you to come.

            He looks so good with your cum on his face.

            You fall back onto the mattress and listen to your boyfriend lick his own face clean. He sucks on each individual finger and you prop yourself up on one arm to watch. You whine at how hot it is and then he stands up, his years of sophistication and maturity over you etched on his face. He slaps your thigh and leaves the room.

            “You’ve taken a pretty long lunch break. Don’t you need to get back to work?”

            “But what about you?” you call after him, trying to clean yourself up quickly as you realize what time it is. He scoffs from the doorway and turns to look you in the eye mischievously.

            “Me? I make my own hours. I don’t have to be at work until I say.”

            You button your pants and roll your eyes.

            “You know what I mean.”

            “I do know what you mean,” he nods. “And I hope you had a good lunch today because the second you get home tonight, you’re fucking me until I can’t see straight.”

            You grab your Coil immediately and tell your boss you got food poisoning from your lunch. It’s your poor German stomach, not used to raw fish yet. She fusses her condolences and says she’ll see you tomorrow.

            Then you fuck Mizuki until he can’t see straight.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noiz will come to remember many scenes from his first few years on the island, but this one is just a little too close to home

 

            The nice thing about living so close to Aoba’s grandmother is that you also live close to Aoba. That comes in handy when you’re pissed as hell at him and want to go rip him a new asshole.

            You know Tae-san goes to the markets in the early afternoon to get fresh ingredients for dinner, so you tell Mizuki you’re going to go grab your laptop from work and head in the opposite direction instead. It’s a Saturday afternoon and Mizuki has been well satiated by your dick all morning, so you leave him to shower and clean himself after the intense, hours-long fucking you just gave him.

            That means you’re also heading over to Aoba’s feeling rather accomplished and cocky already, but that’s beside the point.

            (There’s something about being able to please Mizuki sexually that still makes you proud of yourself. You don’t think that will ever go away.)

            He’s happily surprised to see you when he opens the door and tells you Mink isn’t around right now. You don’t know why he thinks you’d give a shit about that, but that’s all the better for you. You decide to get right into it. You grab the door handle from him and let yourself in. He gasps sharply and looks from the door to you, his face contorted to dread. You step toward him menacingly.

            “Why did you tell Koujaku?”

            You close the door for him and back him up towards the wall. You’re suddenly viscerally reminded of the first time you ever met him, holed up in his room, using his stuff. You sort of grimace when you remember holding him against the wall back then, too. He should have kicked your ass for that more. He _did_ – or he was _going_ to – but things got interrupted, if you remember correctly.

            “Why did I tell – Noiz, get off of me!”

            You’re not actually touching him at all, but he turns his body to the side anyway. He doesn’t defend himself. He doesn’t touch you whatsoever. Huh. He’s even gentler than he used to be.

            “Why did you tell Koujaku about what I asked you?”

            “I told him because it was a weird thing to ask me, Noiz!”

            So he’s getting right into it, too. Good. That makes things easier on you.

            “A weird thing?”

            “I had to talk to _someone_ about it. I didn’t know what to do!”

            “So you chose Koujaku? Not Mink?”

            “ _You_ told Mink!”

            “Exactly. So if you had to talk to someone, why not someone who already knew?”

            Aoba squirms against the wall uncomfortably. It seems you hit a nerve. You wonder if Aoba and Mink aren’t quite as perfect and interesting as they seem. There’s some sort of insecurity underneath it all, despite how sweet and gentle they are with each other.

            “Mink and I _did_ talk about it,” he says quietly. “I wanted a second opinion.”

            “This isn’t a doctor’s visit.”

            “No, it’s not,” he says angrily, turning to you finally. He seems to have had enough. That didn’t take long. His entire body stiffens as the mood in the room changes and you actually take a step back. “And it _should_ be. Scrap is not the answer to this problem, Noiz.”

            You frown at him slightly. Scrap is not a doctor. You know that. But doctors never helped you before. And you sure as hell aren’t going back to one to find out if they will now.

            “Just… tell me. What does Scrap do?”

            Aoba stares at you seriously, his body relaxing. This is his arena. He can tell you about Scrap. He doesn’t know how to deal with you when you’re annoyed or angry, but when you want something from him, he realizes he has the upper hand.

            “Scrap is a powerful thing,” he tells you. “It shouldn’t be and _can’t_ be used lightly. Scrapping Mink wasn’t something I meant to do. The same is true for Mizuki. And Mizuki is lucky he woke up at all.”

            You scowl at him unwittingly.

            “I _know_ he was. I _know_ all this. Why do people keep telling me these things as if I don’t _already know?”_

“Because you’re not acting like you hear us!” Aoba says suddenly, his abrupt change in pitch startling you. Your eyes go wide and you take another step away from him. “You’re going around behind Mizuki’s back! You’re going around behind all of our backs! What are we supposed to do? Noiz, we _care_ about you, but we also care about Mizuki. We’re not going to let him get hurt again.”

            You stare at him. They’re not going to let Mizuki get hurt again. That’s a pretty nutty coincidence, since it’s this condition that always caused you to hurt people in the first place. It’s this condition that meant you didn’t understand what pain was – you _don’t_ understand what pain is – and you have to be overtly careful _not_ to hurt anyone. It’s a laugh that curing this condition is exactly what would help you _not_ hurt anyone again.

            A brief memory of hugging Emmerich far too tightly flashes in your mind.

            And what does he mean, _again?_ Surely, he’s referring to Morphine. He’s referring to Mizuki’s parents. He’s referring to his adopters and his captors and his abandoners. He’s definitely _not_ referring to you, because it’s not his place to bring that up at all. Aoba has no idea what you and Mizuki have been through – unless Mizuki has gone behind _your_ back and told him about it – so he certainly _can’t_ be talking about how _you_ once hurt Mizuki. Maybe it’s true, that you did hurt him, but it’s taken you months to accept that it wasn’t the same as Virus or Trip or his parents or Dry Juice. You might have hurt him, but you didn’t do it the way those people did. You did it because you loved him the wrong way. They did it because they could.

            Aoba starts to twitch uneasily in the silence. You don’t move a muscle as his eyes dart from you to the ceiling to the floor then back to you… then back to the ceiling, then to the floor… he’s awkward when he’s uncomfortable.

            “I didn’t mean that you’ve ever hurt him,” he says finally, his voice much lower and less sure of itself as before. “And I didn’t mean that we don’t care about you. We just don’t think this is the right decision.”

            _We_. That’s what pisses you off the most. When you were young, your parents made the decision for you: you’d be locked away so that no one had to deal with this condition but you. Now that you’re older, these people – your friends? – are making it: to keep you chained to this condition because _it’s not as bad as it seems!_ But what do they know? Either way, you’ve always been in bondage to this disease and they don’t understand a thing about it.

            The idea that you’re no longer a child is foreign to you and very difficult to fully realize. But when you acknowledge that your parents don’t control you anymore, that’s when you remember: you’re no longer a child. You _hate_ being treated like a _child._

            “You know, my life was a lot easier when I didn’t care if I might die tomorrow.”

            Aoba sneers at you grotesquely.

            You knew it was a terrible thing to say before you said it, but you don’t regret anything. It’s how you feel and Aoba should know that.

            “That is _not fair!”_ he shouts. “ _Don’t_ put that on me!”

            “I’m not putting anything on you,” you say quickly, defensively, as your temper starts to rise. “I’m asking you to help me.”

            “You’re putting _everything_ on me!” Aoba shouts desperately, his voice cracking in distress. You grate your teeth together and try not to cry tears of anger. “If I do this and it goes wrong, you could _die!_ If I do this and it goes right, Mizuki will resent me forever! If I _don’t_ do this, you’ll never leave me alone until I do! _You’ll_ hate me forever!”

            He’s really thought about this. And when he puts it like that, you kind of see his point, but you’re too angry right now to care. This is still more of a burden on you than anyone could ever know and you’re _going_ to lift it off, one way or the other. Why can’t _anyone see how much of a burden this is?_

            “And if I go to the doctor they’ll run tests,” you seethe, recalling a childhood of needles and tubes and endless questioning. “And they’ll ask me if it hurts and I’ll say no and they’ll keep doing it. They’ll hope they can find a way to make it hurt.”

            “Isn’t that what you’re asking me to do?” Aoba says challengingly, like he’s determined to show you that he’s not moved by your sob story. Your nostril flares in absolute rage and you don’t know what else to say.

            “Fuck you, Aoba.”

            Aoba doesn’t flinch.

            “Fuck you, too.”

            “Oi.”

            You both jump at the sudden bass in the doorway. There Mink stands, dumbly, and with a plastic bag hanging from his hand. He’s almost like Trip for a moment: massive but unthreatening. His eyes are tired and confused instead of the intimidatingly calculating that you remember so well. He takes a few steps inside and drops the bag on the small table and then starts to take off his coat.

            “What’s going on?”

            You don’t know how you didn’t hear the door open. When you look back to Aoba, his body is relaxed and that instills even more anger in you. You don’t get to relax. You don’t get to be glad that someone on your side showed up. That person can’t show up because no one is on your side.

            “Nothing,” Aoba says at first, but your unapologetic glare tells a different story. You don’t exactly want to tell Mink about it though, because he’ll undoubtedly tell you to get lost and then wrap Aoba up in his oversized arms and kiss his cheeks and shower him with reassurances that he’s a perfect angel with the skin of a porcelain doll and the ass of a – you can’t think of a metaphor for Aoba’s perfect ass right now, but Mink would be able to come up with one, you’re sure. And it would be great. And Aoba would fall in love with him all over again and you’d be sitting in the rain gutter, punching your thigh in hopes that one day you’d feel it and eating rats. You have no idea where the eating rats thing came from. You’re in a bad mood.

            “It’s not my business,” Mink says, turning to hang his coat up and pick the bag back up off the table. “But it’s also not nothing.”

            He disappears into the kitchen and Aoba stares at you questioningly before you both follow him in. He starts to put the food he bought away and you notice a lot of weird ingredients; lots of stuff you’ve never seen before and have no clue as to their origins.

            “It’s about Scrap,” he says abruptly, his voice almost deafening to you. You’ll never get over just how deep it is. “It’s not that hard to figure out.”

            Aoba sighs and folds his arms across his chest.

            “It’s not anyone’s business but Noiz’s,” he says. You roll your eyes. And Koujaku’s, of course. But Aoba won’t admit to that. You’re too nervous to say anything though, so you continue to watch Mink move his enormous frame around this kitchen that suddenly seems so tiny.

            “Unless he wants to make it someone else’s,” Mink replies, turning from the refrigerator suddenly to look you in the eye. Your body tenses but he’s watching you gently. Knowingly.

            “I get it,” you say. “I brought you into it and now you get to tell whoever you want. If I don’t want people to know, I should stop telling people –”

            Mink shakes his head. You stop mid-sentence and close your mouth, bringing your feet together and squaring your shoulders at him. You implore him with your eyes to indulge you so he does:

            “There’s one more person I think you should tell.”

            You stare at him unforgivably. Then you shake _your_ head and look away.

            “I can’t tell him.”

            “Why not?”

            You purse your lips. Mink is relentless.

            “He’ll shoot me down before I can get anything out,” you say, surprising yourself with your openness. “He wouldn’t let me tell him why it could be a good thing.”

            Mink nods at you and then shuts the refrigerator door. He points at the Coil on your wrist.

            “Maybe you should invite him over for dinner. Tae-san mentioned she would be late and to eat without her. A perfect opportunity to talk about it all around.”

            You look down at your own Coil and shake your head again.

            “He’ll get mad that I told all of you before him,” you say. “He’ll think it’s an ambush.”

            “Then he’ll think that regardless,” Mink says, walking toward you and Aoba and gesturing for you both to sit down. “If you think it’s a bad idea, don’t do it. Otherwise, call him, then sit. I’ll make dinner.”

            There’s nothing you want to do less right now than call Mizuki and invite him over here for dinner. There’s nothing less appealing than the thought of telling him tonight, that you’ve been doing this behind his back, and then spilling the beans in front of other people. Mizuki loves Aoba and Mink, but he’ll probably get angry at you for involving them in the first place, much less trying to sneak them into the confessional booth. He’ll tell you off later, thinking that you told him in front of other people so that he had to keep his cool instead of getting angry –

            But somehow Mink has an authority over you. If Mink thinks you should do it, you figure you should probably do it.

            The line is ringing when you realize that Aoba and Mink are not on your side. They’re on Mizuki’s.

            So if anyone is getting ambushed tonight, it’s you.

            “God, I need you to get back here,” is how he answers his Coil. “I tried to keep my hands off myself but I can’t stop thinking about you.”

            “Mizuki?”

            “When will you be home?”

            “Don’t – stop,” you say headily, realizing that Mizuki is naked and hard right now and all you want is to go home and plunge headlong into his chest for an embarrassingly long cuddle session. “I – Mink and Aoba want us to join them for dinner. Now.”

            “Now? It’s – hardly even four. Can’t you come home first, and then we can go over later?”

            “No, I – just come down here. Please?”

            Mizuki lets out a long sigh and pauses for a moment.

            “Yeah, okay. Of course. But honestly, I have to jack off and take a shower first.”

            “Do them at the same time,” you say before hanging up. You realize that you should have added not to send a picture of the process, as he’s prone to do, but you figure he knows you’re with other people so he won’t.

            He does, two minutes after you’ve taken your seat silently at the kitchen table across from Aoba. You sigh as you check your messages and are greeted with a picture of Mizuki’s hand around his dick.

            You remember sitting at this table years ago. Aoba, Koujaku and Clear were here too, angrily eating donuts with bumps on their heads, just like you. Mink had been seated on the couch, which, when you turn to check, is still in the exact same spot as it was then. But it’s a stark contrast, then and now. You thought Mink was a hardened criminal, loathe to join the rest of you bingbongs at the table. And now he’s cooking dinner, the love his life sitting across from you. The love of his life was sitting across from you that day too; the only difference was that you thought he could be the love of _your_ life. You remember when Aoba looked far less worldly than he does now, and you wonder once again what happened between them. You can’t begin to imagine how their relationship works.

            But through all the nostalgia of time continuously turning over, there is one thing that remains the same in this scene: Mizuki isn’t here. Back then, you didn’t even know that he existed. But now, the one thing you can definitely feel is his absence.

            Missing Mizuki is something you can always feel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm such a fucking sucker i love mizunoiz so much i love noiz being in love with mizuki so MUCH IM SUCH A FUCKING SUCKER this is the second part of the chapter i meant to have up last week so once again its short, hopefully next update will be longer agian!


End file.
